


The Nose Break Drop

by cecelej



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (But also real Sheith heavy for all y'all who read between the lines), Alternate Universe - Burlesque Club, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, DJ Lance, M/M, Modern AU, Pidge is 18 btw, SHEITH - Freeform, Strippers & Strip Clubs, This is real Klance heavy for all y'all Klance fans, Voltron, but it's light Shance, klance, like beginning stages of Shance, shance, shklance - Freeform, they're all of age in this au, vld
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 21:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14819553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecelej/pseuds/cecelej
Summary: Keith is a stripper. Lance is a DJ. And Shiro is gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HI! I'm back with another fic. This one is almost 100% done, so updates will be weekly and on time!!

Lance reached over the bar, grabbing a tall, sweating drink from Hunk. His fingers fogged the cup when they touched the cold glass. The club was hot tonight, both literally and figuratively. Lance’s t-shirt was sticking to his back with sweat. It was only half from the heat that his DJ booth gave off and the bodies that were packed into the club. He looked to Pidge. She was getting ready to close the ticket box, the place reaching far past its max capacity already.

It was a rare night that they had a full house. Altea Boulevard, the street that the club was rooted to, was brimming with competition. Strip joints and burlesque bars sat on the street like the drunken crowds’ litter, abundant and stinking of liqueur. But Keith had a new routine, new music, a new outfit.  
At the moment, the red lighting of the stage was flashing on Keith, slow to the heavy beat of the song that Lance had left playing. Keith leaned back, a pole resting against the crook where his neck met his shoulder. It supported him as he continued to descend, bending half backwards, presenting the bulge beneath his clinging leather pants. Keith was the other half of the heat in the club.

Lance turned back to Hunk, sharing a look. They’d shared it before, on packed nights, when news of Keith’s grandeur had passed through the streets and drawn in the crowd. It was all well and good for the crowd, but Keith was gone beneath his sultry smiles and half-lidded eyes. They still weren’t quite sure if he was lost in the dance, or if he was gone somewhere else completely. 

Lance took a long swig of his drink to the sound of a low whistle from the man beside him at the bar. He looked at the man, middle aged, most likely closeted and married based on the wedding ring and unfashionable business suit. Not bad looking, but not good either. 

He noticed Lance giving him the once over and saw it as an invitation. 

“Could you imagine parading him around?” The man asked over the loud boom of the music. Lance tried to stifle his grin. He didn’t bother looking back at the stage where the man was staring hungrily. “That’s the kind of guy who dresses all sexy, does crazy shit in bed -and wherever else the mood hits him- just smilin’ the whole time. Happy to do it for ya, like you’re a king.” 

“Oh yeah?” Lance asked, baiting the man. Hunk rolled his eyes with a smile before moving on to other patrons. The man was practically drooling over Keith.

“Hoo, yeah,” the man whistled. “Whatathey call him? Cherry?” He looked to Lance, who nodded once in confirmation. “Even his name, that’s old school twink shit. He’s hunting for a Daddy. He wants to serve someone. Just look at his pretty hair. Long enough to get a good hold on it.” 

“You’re probably right,” Lance lied, pushing away from the bar with a laugh. He had to announce the next dancer, fade out Keith’s music, and start the new track. 

It wasn’t the first time someone had given that persona to Keith. He put on a good act, after all. But it couldn’t be any farther from the truth. The outfits, the routines, the everything, it wasn’t Keith. The way he moved was his, but the smiles, the winks, the songs. Everything else was manufactured. 

In fact, when Lance first started working at the club, he’d fallen for the act. He’d been given Keith’s song list and watched him bump, grind, and strip throughout the night. He’d seen the sneaky smiles and flirty touches. He though he could tell from a dance who someone was. But he was wrong. 

And he’d done everything wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take my time jumps, take them and know, it's because I did this for fun and didn't care about poor writing choices lol

Two Years Earlier

“Hey, Cherry!” Lance called out, jogging up to the bar from his DJ station. Keith was sitting on the bar, red satin robe tied loosely and falling around his shoulders. The last patron of the club had just left, drunkenly swaying, and ushered out of the door by Pidge. Sunlight would be peaking into the doors soon. Hunk, who had been smiling at Lance on his decent from his station, quickly lifted a hand, waving it by his neck in a slicing motion and trying to get Lance to shut up. 

Lance didn’t pay Hunk much attention, his eyes trained instead on Keith’s exposed shoulder. Hunk realized his near invisibility and sighed, lowering his eyes to the glass he was drying. Lance’s eyes moved to the purple toned eyes that glared his way. They hadn’t met yet and Lance figured from the cold gaze that Keith must have thought he was some straggler from the crowd. 

“I’m Lance, the new DJ. Hunk recruited me. How bout a drink on me?” It wasn’t much of a question. He left Keith no time to answer before turning to Hunk. “Hunk, buddy, one Dirty Shirley Temple, extra cherries, for our Cherry,” Lance slid his gaze over to Keith, a smirk playing on his face. 

Hunk gulped but made the drink quickly, sliding it over to Lance, praying Lance didn’t hand it to Keith. 

But, Lance did just that, moving into Keith’s personal space to offer him the drink. 

“Jesus Christ,” Keith mumbled, firmly pushing the drink away. His voice was deeper and darker than Lance had imagined. “Hunk, you brought this joke in here?” 

Hunk shrugged, a sheepish smile on his face.

“Old friend,” Hunk explained, “You want the usual?” 

“Make it a double,” Keith said, withered eyes shooting back to Lance. 

“What’s your problem? I’m just being nice!” Lance said as Hunk poured two shots of cheap whiskey. 

“Nice my ass,” Keith mumbled, clinking his glass on the table. He tipped the tall shot glass to Hunk, a silent ‘cheers’ before taking the shot in one hot swallow. “You were trying to fuck. Because you assume I’ll fuck. Because I’m a stripper. If that Shirley temple bullshit worked I’d have fucked every guy in Altea. And if you think you’re special because you work here, or because you have connections, learn fast. You’re not special. I’m not going to fuck you.” 

Lance felt his face turn bright red, heat burning in his cheeks. He felt the immediate need to reject the rejection, to void it and convince everyone that he hadn’t meant it, that it’d been a joke. 

Keith stood cool as ever, his expression flat, even as a he took his second shot. 

“I’m not trying to fuck you! I was just being nice! I figured you liked cherries because of the name! Fuck, talk about an ego. You’re not even that hot. And you’re definitely not my type,” Lance said, managing to form coherent sentences even though he was still blazing with embarrassment. 

“Uh huh, sure,” Keith said, not sparing a look at Lance. Instead, he kept his eyes on Hunk. “I’m gonna get changed. Can you call Coran around to the back for me?” 

Lance had made every mistake, just like thousands of guys before him. Keith had bristled to him the moment Lance had used the name ‘Cherry.’ That person wasn’t real. It set apart who Keith’s clients were and who his friends were. And a client wasn’t to be trusted. 

The sugary-sweet drink and the overt flirting just put it all over the top. It had started their relationship at the bottom of a downward spiral. It took time, but eventually, they evolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, let me know if you see any typos and I'll fix them!
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A party chapter

It was a week later that they went back to their normal selves, bickering frenemies. It was a month after THAT that they found themselves drunk at a party in Pidge’s dorm. The whole hall was boisterous, hopping in and out of other peoples’ rooms and drunkenly bonding. Spirit week or some other bullshit that Lance didn’t know about. 

He felt a little out of place. He never went to college. But neither had Keith. They had that in common as they laid back on Pidge’s roommate’s bed, shooting the shit about what college they would’ve gone to if they’d had the choice. 

“You wanted to be a pilot? Like, ‘Hello, this is your captain speaking, we’ll be landing in Tampa soon, the weather is a sunny 89 degrees,” Lance stopped with his ‘captain voice’ when he heard Keith snort a laugh. He peaked over, and regretted it. Keith’s cheeks were pink, and his smile was stunning. His eyes were squinted shut, half from being drunk, half from laughing. Keith turned to Lance, a smile still on his face, his eyes glinting with drunken smiles.

“Maybe, eventually. But I wanted to fly fighter jets and space ships and cool shit like that.” Keith lifted his arms, zooming his hands gracefully above them, miming jet planes maneuvering the skies. “I wanted to do something that no one’s ever done before,” Keith said, his voice taking on a dreamy quality that Lance had never heard before. Keith so rarely talked about himself, And talking about past dreams, dreams that had died, it was more personal than Lance had ever thought Keith would be with him. 

“So, why didn’t you? How do you go from wanting to be a space explorer to being a pole dancer?” Lance asked, his voice drunk but serious. The sudden shift alerted Keith to the change in conversation and he sat up, smile fading. 

Lance followed him, sitting up as Keith grabbed his drink from the dresser and took a long swig. He noticed that the room had been deserted. College kids still hooted and hollered in the hall and from other rooms, but Pidge’s room had become a brief respite in the party. 

“What about you?” Keith asked. “How’d you go from classical pianist to DJ at a strip joint?” 

“You know how,” Lance said. “Parents didn’t have the money. But I told you that. You never told me why you didn’t go to college. I don’t know anything about you. So tell me,” Lance said, feeling emblazoned to get Keith to open up. 

Keith paused. He sighed, looking over his shoulder at Lance. Lance searched his eyes for the reason that Keith was so closed off as Keith searched for a reason in Lance’s eyes, a reason why he cared. 

“I don’t tell people for a reason, Lance,” Keith finally said. 

“Did you kill someone?” Lance asked.

“What? No,” Keith said back, looking offended. It was cute and Lance couldn’t help but laugh. 

“So, what’s the matter? Is it something embarrassing?” Lance asked. 

Keith shrugged, taking another long swig of his drink. He shook the can when he came to the bottom of it. He would need to get another. He looked to Lance, all big blue eyes and wonder, and considered telling him how he’d ended up here. But the thoughts broke his heart, he’d never had to say it out loud before, and it still felt raw. Especially after what had happened between them a month prior. 

Keith gritted his teeth together and stood from the bed. 

“I’m going to get another drink,” he said, leaving Lance alone in Pidge’s bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to add a chapter last week because of Season 6. . . . I loved it too much to function. So anyway,   
> Thanks for reading!! :)


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re driving me crazy, Samurai,” Lance said. The light had filtered into the club when he’d opened the door but Keith didn’t stutter in his routine. When he closed the door after himself, the club swallowed the light away, wallowing in the velvety darkness that Lance was so used to.

Keith was on the pole, his gloved hands holding hard to it as he hung upside down, walking on air. He was practicing a performance that was more artsy than Lance was used to seeing, the move was too sophisticated for the club. But when Lance spoke, Keith smirked, letting his stance relax and touching his feet down onto the floor and relaxing into a sleazier routine.

Keith was wearing a cropped red hoodie, one that he’d obviously cut up himself. String hung in messy bundles from the sleeves and from the rough edges that fell over his flat stomach. He wore cut up gray sweatpants, now shorts, that hung baggy around his hips, leaving his hip bones exposed. His hair was in a messy ponytail.

Keith left his eyes closed as he danced but laughed at the comment. 

“You flirting with me?” Keith asked, peaking an eye open and already knowing the answer. 

“Always,” Lance said with a grin. He hopped into the DJ booth and turned on the microphone. Keith abandoned his artsy performance for one Lance was more familiar with. “Testing one, two,” Lance said in a fake announcer voice. He sounded phony and enthusiastic, like a sports broadcaster. Keith curled up the pole, his toned thighs keeping him suspended in the air. “Cherry Pie stays in the air, transfixed by the handsome DJ,” Lance continued, garnering a genuine laugh and an eye roll from Keith. “He’s got a look on his face that says, ‘gimme a kiss, big boy.”

Keith laughed again, letting himself descend the pole quickly. He shoved his hair up into a messy ponytail and looked up to Lance. 

“You got a reason for interrupting my rehearsal?” Keith asked with a smirk on his face. 

“You got a reason to be practicing a dance you’re not gonna do at the club?” Lance countered, flipping off the mic. 

The smile faded from Keith’s lips and he looked away, returning to the pole. Lance wasn’t sure what he’d said. It was getting hard to be around Keith. They’d reached a closeness, an intimate closeness, and now Lance was tripping over ever trap wire that Keith seemed to have rigged up. 

“Special Occasion,” Keith answered. He leaned down by the pole, lifting a bottle that Lance hadn’t noticed earlier. It sloshed as Keith tipped the bottle up to his lips. Lance said nothing, watching as Keith’s adams apple bobbed with each hard gulp of liquor. 

Finally, Keith lowered the bottle. He wiped his wet mouth on his bare arm and set the bottle down again. He placed his hand back on the pole.

“You sure you should be aerial after that?” Lance asked, concern in his voice as Keith, without hesitation, mounted the pole again. He climbed to the top like a spider, quick and languid. 

Keith didn’t answer. Instead he went into a knee hold and spun around the bar a few times in slow circles. His lackadaisical spinning was sparking annoyance in Lance’s once upbeat mood. 

“What’s the occasion anyway?” Lance asked. He couldn’t see Keith expression, but he heard the exasperated sigh. He nearly had a heart attack when Keith brought his legs above his head and dropped down the pole. He stopped an inch from the hard floor, nose nearly touching the sparkling stage. 

“What the fuck was that!?” Lance asked, jumping down from his spot in his booth. Keith was passive aggressively pole dancing at him and Lance wasn’t going to back down this time. He was going to get his answers. 

“A nose break drop,” Keith said lazily. He slowly brought himself down to the floor, laying on his back and looking up at Lance where he’d stormed up beside him. Lance towered over him, angry. 

“If you have something to say, can you just fucking say it?” Lance demanded. Keith rolled his eyes and stood. He reached for the bottle again but Lance snatched it out from under him. 

Again, Keith sighed. But he didn’t make a reach for the bottle. Instead he hopped off the stage, heading toward his bag in the front row of seating. 

“You know you ask too many questions, right?” Keith asked. He shucked off his hoodie, dropping it on his bag. Then he made his way over to the bar, reaching behind it for another bottle and popping the top off. This time, he reached for a glass. 

“If you’re celebrating, where’s your boyfriend?” Lance asked back. He was sick of the push and pull. But he regretted it almost immediately. 

He could see Keith visibly shake, his hand jostling the bottle as he poured and spilling cheap whiskey on the bar. 

“Fuck,” Keith whispered, reaching for a bar rag to mop up the mess. 

“Keith?” Lance asked, the concern back in his voice. 

“I said it was a special occasion,” Keith said, his back to lance as he wiped the bar down. “I never said it was a celebration.” 

Keith reached for another glass, pouring one out and setting it in front of the stool beside him. He looked over his shoulder at Lance. 

“Well?” Keith asked. “Are you going to join me or not?” 

“Depends,” Lance said. “You gonna run off this time?” 

Keith stared Lance down. Trying to find something, always looking for something, though Lance wasn’t sure what. He turned back to the wall, the reflective mirror behind the bar showing him in full. He looked, tired. 

“Probably,” Keith said. 

Lance paused at the honestly. 

“Alright,” Lance said, ambling up to the bar and sitting beside Keith. 

They drank until they were dizzy. 

Keith was the first to lean in, kissing the edge of Lance’s mouth. It felt like an apology for something that Lance didn’t know yet. He didn’t stop it though. Keith’s lips felt too good against his own. He turned his head just a fraction of an inch to make it a proper kiss, tongue sliding against Keith’s lips, asking to be let in. 

Keith stood from his stool, pressing himself against Lance, chest to chest, their tongues meeting. He begged himself to forget, for an hour at least. But thoughts flooded his head. Soft black hair, and strong broad shoulders, and kisses much less sloppy than this. He pulled back, wiping his mouth and reaching to pour another shot for himself and Lance. 

Lance swayed on his stool, already a little too drunk. He shook his head when Keith offered him the shot, so Keith took both. 

“Why do you have to be plastered to hook up with me?” Lance asked. “Because of your boyfriend?” 

The question sent guilt down Keith’s spine like fire. He took a swig straight from the bottle. 

“Don’t!” Lance said, grabbing at the bottle. It clanged against Keith’s teeth and dribbled over them both. “You’re gonna kill yourself with all that.” 

 

‘Would that be so bad?’ The thought popped into Keith’s head and he had to scrunch his eyes to scrub it away. Yes. That would be bad. He just couldn’t remember why at the moment. 

 

He realized Lance was still talking. 

“-not cleaning it up. I don’t do barf,” Lance said. 

“Not gonna puke,” Keith said. “Just, stop asking questions.” 

He leaned back in, meeting Lance’s lips. 

“We can fuck in my dressing room,” Keith said. 

 

/ / 

 

Lance stumbled. Putting his jeans on was hard. He was still drunk. He looked to Keith who was laying on the small red couch in the dressing room. 

Keith’s hair was all tangled in the back where it rested on pillows and a few discarded costume pieces. He’d barely had the drunken sense to pull his underwear back up as Lance got dressed. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. Lance could tell that Keith’s whole world was spinning. 

“Keith?” Lance asked. He waited, pulling his jeans up as Keith slowly looked over at him. “Your boyfriend isn’t going to like, kill me, right? He’s not some mafia sugar daddy who’s gonna put me in cement shoes and throw me in the river for fucking you, right?” 

“No,” Keith said. His voice was sad and his eyes drifted to the opposite wall. “He’s not going to do that.” 

Lance nodded, swaying as he tried to slip his shoes back on.

“Good, because I think I really like you, and I want the chance to figure out if you like me too,” Lance admitted. He realized, just seconds after it left his mouth, that he probably shouldn’t have said it, lest it scare Keith off again. 

“Hey, Lance?” Keith said, still not making eye contact. 

“Yeah?” Lance said. He moved closer, pulling the trashcan from beneath Keith’s vanity and placing it on the floor beside Keith’s head.

“My boyfriend,” Keith said. He paused, chewing on his lip. He turned to look at Lance. Lance looked both hopeful and scared. “He’s my soul mate.” 

Keith could see the heart ache in Lance’s eyes. 

“Wow,” Lance said, faking a laugh and a smile. “That sucks for me, huh?” Lance sat at the chair at the Vanity, lost in drunken, self-deprecating, thought. 

“Hey, Lance?” Keith asked again, and Lance looked to Keith. 

“My boyfriend,” Keith began, pausing again. The first part had been easy. It was sewn into him like DNA. Soul mate. It was true and real and he felt it in every molecule of his body. But the second part. He’d never had to tell anyone. He’d never even wanted to admit it to himself. But Lance deserved some sort of explanation. 

“He’s dead.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, let me know if there are any typos or mistakes. I proofread all of my stuff on my own so I miss things all the time lol


End file.
